34. A Visit Gone Awry
Chapter thirty-four
A Visit Gone Awry
“Don’t stand and wait for her, advance!” Imalroc shouted from where he stood beside a dueling pair. “Close off the space!”
The trainees shuffled around a small ring he’d demarcated with rocks and branches.
Behind them lay more and more rings, each filled set of combatants.
Red dust plumed from hundreds of pairs of ever-circling feet, and the training grounds echoed with the hollow thunder of wooden practice weapons colliding.
“Imalroc!” Tefka appeared on the worn path leading from the grounds back to new lines of battleboxer tents, waving him over. Almatra lurked just behind Tefka’s shoulder. Judging by her sour expression, Tefka didn’t bring good news.
Imalroc jogged over to them. “Another problem?” he asked.
The newly formed banner legions were mostly operating smoothly, but there were scuffles and issues to resolve.
The work was endless. Veshion seemed to have the best luck at unifying people, mainly by devising training regimens that were puke-inducing, and then spending the whole time insulting everyone in the unit under his supervision that day.
The soldiers and battleboxers could all wail about him together.
It alarmed Tefka, but Imalroc thought it was fairly brilliant.
“Not a problem, exactly, more of a… a favor, I suppose.” Tefka beckoned Imalroc further from the grounds, lowering his voice.
“You know the Southern Feld Council must be swayed to act against the queen. We have a chance to present our progress as a fighting force to the head of the Council. He’s influential. ”
Imalroc tilted his head. Tefka seemed to be building to something unpleasant. “What’s the favor?”
“Feldlady Tythe has arranged a meeting. It’s meant to be with Morbank, but Command Medallion Galada—”
“She knows that fuckhead will put his foot in it,” Almatra said.
Tefka gave her a weary, pained glance. “It would be best if Southland Army captains refrained from calling our commanding officer a fuckhead.”
“It’d be better if he wasn’t one,” Imalroc replied. He exchanged a biting smile with Almatra, ignoring Tefka’s sigh.
“Yes, well, he’s what we’ve got. For whatever reason, Command Medallion Galada has asked that I speak to Feldlord Calteak instead. She hopes I can allay one of his concerns, which is that our rally camps won’t be able to stand against the Red Guard. I’d like you two to come with me.”
The new alliances in the camp were still fragile, and leaving it might be a damn foolish idea.
Especially if he was scuttling off to argue a feldlord into caring about anything besides himself and his onyx.
“I think Almatra and I are needed here. We’re still designing the training schedule and determining who has the technique to teach what. ”
“Not to mention, I’d rather eat dirt than sit at a lord’s table and flatter him,” Almatra added.
“I assume you’d like a chance to use all that training in actual battle?” Tefka turned to Almatra. “As for flattering him, I don’t think that’ll work with Calteak. He withstood pressure from Feldlady Tythe and Kuraya alike. We need to convince him that we are building a force capable of winning.”
Imalroc turned, studying the dueling pairs wilting in the rising heat. “Why do you need me or Almatra for that?”
“He wants us because we’re scary,” Almatra muttered.
Tefka frowned at her. “River is the largest of the rally camps, and the only one where everyone is being trained by men and women who have seen actual combat. It’s not because you’re frightening. You’re inspiring,” he finished quietly. “You can make people believe we could win.”
Imalroc half-expected it to be some bizarre form of mocking. But Tefka met his gaze seriously, unblinkingly. He meant it.
Almatra looked startled before she reassembled her scowl. “Fine. Send Imalroc.”
“I thought you’d prefer to go together,” Tefka said. “Calteak might ask you about battleboxing, and I thought… I don’t know, that you shouldn’t have to be the only one there who knows anything about it?”
It was more consideration than Imalroc had ever expected from a Southerner.
More than he would’ve thought to ask for.
He still didn’t want to go. But maybe… maybe he had a duty to something besides himself now.
The thought tumbled over and over in his head, new and strange and not entirely unwelcome.
Almatra sighed. “I don’t like the thought of leaving Dola here to fend off Morbank by herself.”
“He’ll be busy hosting a delegation from Sol Serene. If we leave this afternoon, we’ll be back before he even realizes we’ve gone,” Tefka said.
A day or two could be spared. If it convinced Calteak to support open rebellion, it would be a significant step. If it didn’t, he would continue preparing River for Kuraya’s inevitable attack. Calteak would learn one way or another that there was no hiding from this fight.
Imalroc arched an eyebrow at Almatra. “You blacking an eye on the Medallion if he so much as looks at Dola isn’t exactly helping her or anyone.”
“How dare you suggest that I’d only get one of his eyes.”
“My apology. I shouldn’t have assumed he’d have any face left.”
“I’m not hearing any of this,” Tefka mumbled, hurrying forward.
“Don’t worry, Tefka. We won’t talk this way in front of his grand Lordship Influentialness.” Imalroc lengthened his stride to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with him, while Almatra swooped in on his other side.
“Best behavior.” Almatra saluted. “I will only call him a fuckhead behind his back and low enough that he can’t tell who said it.”
“Maybe bringing the two of you is actually a bad—”
“Too late now,” Imalroc said. He thumped Tefka on the back. “We’re inspirations. And we’re coming with you.”
***
Imalroc wrapped his hair high on the crown of his head, desperate to get it off his neck in the late afternoon heat.
Back at River, everyone would be in the water by now.
Instead, he’d made the brilliant decision to gallop off after Tefka, and now he was stumbling through humidity so thick it choked him.
He imagined his limbs cool, weightless, and clean. Someday.
He followed Almatra and Tefka through the hazy green, ducking beneath vines and past enormous, dewy leaves.
The path was barely wide enough for two of them to walk beside each other, let alone stay close to the small company of soldiers Galada had insisted they bring along.
Most intelligence said the Red Guard ranged in the towns north of Kirinoll, but there had been sightings reported in the Midlands.
Kuraya’s followers were up to something.
“It’s high heat, sir,” Martau called from where he marched behind Imalroc. “Any plans to stop and rest?”
“We’re nearly there,” Tefka said. “Just need to cross the Sidradell, and follow it north a little ways.”
The place where Tefka chose to slide down the banks of the slow-moving little river was an easy enough crossing, but Imalroc still got mud all over himself despite hopping from stone to stone.
Climbing up the other side, a tall, tufted plant walloped dirt and water all down his ribs.
Imalroc batted at it in retaliation, just as he recognized the tube of its stem and the bright orange spikes that crowned it. A firewick.
A brief churn of memory, a wave of something too bitter to be purely sadness, and then he was past it and up on the other side of the river.
He needed to do something about the shirt dripping disgusting water down his side. Imalroc stripped it off and slapped it over his shoulder. When they got closer to Calteak’s, he’d put on the frilly tunic Tefka had brought for him.
There were whispers behind him, and Imalroc glanced back. The soldiers’ gazes all darted away like a flock of sparrows. As if they hadn’t all just been staring at the decorations years of battleboxing had given him.
Almatra did not share their qualms. She shouldered past Martau to come up next to him. “What is that one from?”
He didn’t bother trying to crane around and examine his own back. “Which one?”
“This odd, round one.” She poked him on his last rib.
Imalroc swatted her hand. “You just wanted an excuse to jab me with your claws—”
“Well, yes.” She laughed. “But it’s a perfect little circle! Practically demands jabbing. What kind of weapon leaves that?”
He was aware of the feet behind them trampling closer, the soldiers closing in to listen. He shrugged. “An iron rod. Heated.”
His recollection of it was foggy and incomplete.
He remembered hanging in chains in one of the dark rooms Melgreth Hize had loved.
Falling in and out of consciousness by the time the glowing iron came into play, and it was not until he had woken up on the ground with his skin swollen and shining that he discovered the circular burn.
He let the memory sweep through him and trickle away.
The anger remained, a slick coil twisting in his blood.
“They let fighters use branding irons in a battlebox?” One soldier blurted out the question, sounding horrified.
“No,” Imalroc replied, making the magnanimous choice not to roll his eyes. “One of my handlers used it on me when I was tied up.”
“What’d you do that brought out an iron?” asked Almatra.
Imalroc grinned. He’d forgotten that part. “I kicked over a candle at the right moment and it caught on his trousers. By the time he put out the flames, he was scared shitless and had an indecent hole in the fabric.”
Almatra and Martau were the only ones who seemed to find it funny. The others looked as if they couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or impressed.
Martau shook his head, smiling. “I’ve never heard of a battleboxer pulling stunts like that and staying unbroken. But you… you never bowed to any of them. I heard that you once refused a command for a full fell at the Arble!”
The awe in his voice was more than a little embarrassing, and Imalroc studied the river so he wouldn’t have to meet Martau’s gaze.